The
need for real thinking is not so that others or society will
regard you as wise and thoughtful, as a philosopher. Since
others and society are neither wise nor thoughtful, their
opinion or valuation of anyone about anything is meaningless. You
need to do real thinking because the evolution or development
of your consciousness
needs it. Others
and society do not give a damn about the development of your consciousness. In fact, they do not give a damn about their
own consciousness, and even if they think they do,
they have no real connection with any genuine development
of consciousness. This is because they have no real thinking
about it but content themselves with emotional imagination,
beliefs and assumptions even where they believe they have
spiritual, metaphysical or developmental aspirations.
There
are other common substitutes for real thinking that include
scientific materialism, post-modern destructive cynicism
and clever show-off criticism. Neither the emotional believers nor the
brain-in-a-jar Dennettoid disbelievers
do real thinking. So
the entire subject of thinking is
far more mysterious and elusive than most classes of mentality
want to understand. Of
all the philosophers of the Twentieth Century, it was Martin
Heidegger who inquired most deeply into the meaning of real
thinking, but post-modernists, such as Richard Rorty, try to tear Heidegger down as a sort of vainglorious
metaphysician, while others like to imagine he was a Nazi
when in fact he simply pretended to be one to protect his career and his family from
Hitler. He was
under constant suspicion by the Nazis and ultimately persecuted. The
best of all Germans was oppressed by the worst of all Germans. No, it is people in academia who could
not handle Heidegger’s ideas who wanted to condemn
him as a Nazi, which happens even to this day. So
there is nothing better I can do at this moment than to quote
yet again Heidegger’s wonderful thought from his lectures
on What Is Called Thinking:
“What
is most thought-provoking
in our
thought-provoking time
is that
we are still not thinking”.
Real
thinking, which is original thinking, generative thinking, requires a voluntary
discontinuity in one’s usual so-called “thinking”. Edward de Bono calls it lateral thinking as opposed
to vertical (or linear) thinking. In fact, Heidegger plus de Bono = Chiron,
I can say. The
challenge of real thinking
is both pragmatic and metaphysical, which brings up a wonderful
question:
What is pragmatic metaphysics?
Strangely,
some people in Central Asia have for many centuries dedicated themselves to asking
and answering this question as reported in the writings of
Idries Shah. If
we read and meditate on those Sufi teachings,
we do not convert to Islam or affiliate exclusively with
their Naqshbandi Order. For us, that would not be pragmatic even if it were rather metaphysical. So now the formula becomes:
Heidegger + de Bono + Idries Shah = Chiron
Or Germany + Italy + Turkey = Greece
Geographically,
this puts us somewhere in the Balkans, say Slovenia, Croatia or Serbia. Yugoslavia becomes the cultural crossroads
of potentially real thinking, yet they produce nothing of
available new thinking and thinkers so far. Too
many societal problems and anxieties occupy their minds. But, interestingly, there was an Armenian,
Georges Gurdjieff, who seemed to
almost dwell in the core of our formula. Yet
he failed to produce much more than a silly cult that to
this day produces abberated idiots with big opinions of themselves who are
certainly not doing real thinking in the sense of Heraclitus or Heidegger. And
they certainly have no foothold in the development of extraordinary
cognitive faculties, such as are sometimes demonstrated by
Sufis. The bottom line, however, about all these
various contributors to real thinking is this:
Real thinking is about pragmatic metaphysics.
Most
people in our world will not like this, as we have said. The brains-in-jars will not like the metaphysics and
the spiritual believers will not like the pragmatic. So we are back to Eliminative Materialism
versus Folk Psychology. Unbalanced
brains who imagine they are thinking versus raw
emotional cultists and New Agers who
do not believe thinking is
necessary.
Do
you know why you need to do some real thinking about pragmatic metaphysics? It
is about your possible entry into the totality of your being
as an existential and dynamical process of development of
both your consciousness and your personal energy. Perhaps we can say it is something like
Zen Enlightenment plus your Kundalini Rising in a life of
authentic and natural down-to-Earth effectiveness and true
sanity without identifying yourself with a particular tradition
on the one hand or clinging to naïve Earthbound so-called “Realism” on
the other hand. Do
you understand this twofold requirement? Most
people don’t because their cultural or societal conditioning will not let them. So, we have to quote Heidegger yet again:
“What is most thought-provoking
in our thought-provoking time
is that we are still not thinking”.
Will
you admit to yourself that you still need to learn real,
original, generative thinking? You
cannot learn to do something you imagine you are already
doing. Surely
you want to now understand this better. Since you are reading this article in
private, no one is going to see that you are embarrassed
and inadequate in the field of real thinking. You
can keep your dignity. The
only person who has to know about your embarrassing lack
of real thinking ability is you. But
it is crucial for you to
personally acknowledge to yourself that you are just a lowly
beginner in all this, that you are not even half as advanced
in real thinking as you or even others might believe about
you. Are you
ready for this refreshing new step of humility and clarity
about yourself, which is basic sanity?
It
is basic sanity that
enables us to do real thinking about pragmatic metaphysics. Can you comprehend this totally and without
argument or self-deception? Do
you see the beauty, the depth and simplicity of the thing? Can you fully face your actual state of
being with real awareness? This
is a kind of undramatic personal enlightenment which needs for you to
not socialize about it, not try to prove to others that you
are O.K. or important. The
joy, the release, the liberation that comes with basic sanity means that all resentment,
envy or sense of being left out of the big important things,
suddenly drop way from you, leaving you in an incredible
new space, like a traveler to a far-out planet who has no
need to report to the government or one’s relatives. There
is nobody you have to convince or persuade. You
are exploring real freedom. You
are a walker-in-the-void, the unknown.
It is an act of real personal freedom to become firmly
grounded in basic sanity and do real thinking about pragmatic
metaphysics.
We can develop these ideas. The meaning unfolds.